The Year of the Digital Archive

For the past few years, I've been giving each year of my life a theme, and a title. It sort of sets the stage for what is to come, and establishes my expectations (or hopes) for the year. Here's a list of the past few years names/themes:

2007: The year of the industrial Revolution
2006: The year of living dangerously
2005: The year of the life less ordinary

2007 was all about building R2, and learning new machining skills. Though it was very intense for the first few months of the year, it slowed down for the remainder. It certainly didn't stop, but the learning curve got less steep.

2006 had me living all over the world. France, Australia, England, Italy, Virgina and San Francisco. Crazy year.

2005 saw me beginning to re-direct my life and career. Took a lot of risks that year, and saw a lot of the world as a result.

So 2008 has really one focus: getting every memory inducing artifact digitized. I doubt it will take the whole year, but that's the theme. I want to scan every photo, slide and negative. i want to convert ALL my video to digital. of course, this will include a lot of band related stuff, which is why I mention it here. All of Bills band photos fall into this category, and so do his videos. One of the products of all of this digitization will be the beginning of the long awaited "Stickmen: The Movie", which Bill has had in the back of his head for something like ten years now.

So that's the deal.

The other MAJOR effort that will be undertaken this year is the recording of the debut "Black and Blue" album. B&B is of course a splinter band formed by Bill and I. Lots of good originals, and a few covers will probably make it onto the final album. The goal set forth in a phone conversation a day or two ago is to record 1 song per month. If we record more, that's great, but the goal is one. To accomplish this, bill and I have tasked ourselves with getting the recording studio set up "bisquick" style. This basically means that if we want to record, all we have to do is step into the garage, and press play. Well, record. But you get the idea. Everything will be in place and set up, no matter what we might want to do at that moment. it is my belief that one of the biggest barriers for us is simply not having everything set up. We get the idea to record something, but we have to spent three hours plugging everything in, running cables, firing up the compyoodie, and debugging connections. GIANT pain in the butt. I think if we can cut that out of the pipeline, we'll have a better chance of success. Bill made some headway today, but I'll leave it up to him to report his progress. Or lack thereof.

However, I have completed my "to do" item, and am here with a powerpoint deck to do my presentation.

hello?

Just kidding. But here we go. I put together a few lists with proposed songs for the album, or simply as recording exercises.

Songs we should do
Girl #134
On the Road
Fade Away - Oasis cover
Wandrin' - Folksmen cover
Big Tin Truck
Friend that I Once knew


Songs that are EASY to do
Act naturally
Why don't we get drunk...
Dead Flowers
Don't Pass Me By
King of the Road
Margaritaville
When I'm 64

Would be Nice to have a good recording of
April - might be a "should"
Sympathy for The Devil
Rockville
I'm not the Type
Happy Fathers Day - might be a "should"
Hurricane days - might be a "should"
Spider and the fly


As you can see, there's no shortage of songs we could probably sit down and belt out pretty good performances of right away. There's easily a half a dozen songs there that would make for a great debut album, with most of them being originals. So that's pretty encouraging.

Anyhow, I've still got some research to do for my lists, so there may be more to come soon.